She should have felt stalked. Instead, she knew instinctively what he meant. Realizing how certain she was of that knowledge was almost frightening. Cam would protect her, and, in his way, he was assuring her of that. Even now, so many years after he had made the promise, he still stood by it. And she had no doubt he meant it.
“I won’t find my name on that list.” His lips quirked in a cool smile. “And I’m afraid if I did, I’d have to ignore it. I would do nothing to hurt you, Jaci. You know that. I might paddle your behind for being so stubborn, but I wouldn’t hurt you.”
“Is this a new seduction technique? You keep threatening to hit me Cam, and I’m going to get worried.”
He snorted at that before leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees while he clasped his hands.
“We need to talk about this thing between us.” His gaze was intent, somber.
“No we don’t.” She was perfectly content to just stay furious with him for a little while longer. “Unless you’re going to explain why you couldn’t sleep with me.”
He stared at her from between thick, lush black lashes, his tanned face seemingly wicked, with that scar running down it. As she stared at him, that ache inside her expanded, filled her chest, and then went deeper. What had happened to her dark knight that had scarred his body and made him unwilling to share something as simple as a bed with a woman?
That was such a small intimacy, really, in the total scheme of things. But as she watched him, she could feel a knowledge, a certainty that the Cam she knew was still there somewhere. And she wondered why in the hell she felt so compelled to reach out to him.
“What happened?” she finally whispered. “How were you hurt?”
She needed to know.
“Does the scar affect what’s between us?” he asked, watching her closely.
“There is no ‘us’,” she reminded him, ignoring the clenching of her heart. “You don’t sleep with me, you don’t do anything else with me. Period.”
His lips quirked mockingly as his hand lifted, two fingers thoughtfully running down the scar. “My last mission in the service went bad,” he finally stated. “We were ambushed in Afghanistan and taken prisoner for a few days before we escaped. My chest is pretty messed up, too, as well as my back. It’s not a pretty sight.”
Her breath caught. “You were hurt that bad?” Terror snaked through her.
“I nearly died.” He shrugged as though it didn’t matter. “The doctors were frankly surprised that I survived.”
She had almost lost him. She stared back at him, her breathing harsh, the certainty that he had nearly been taken out of this world slamming inside her.
“I’m fine, Jaci.” He was watching her too closely, his eyes no longer icy, but thoughtful instead, as she reached for the wine, finished it, and then smacked the glass back to the table.
“You are now.” She hadn’t known. She had been focused on her own life all those years, refusing to contact him, to even check on him. He was in the military and she had known it, the chance of danger in his particular field had been high. Why hadn’t it occurred to her that Cam could be hurt?
“I am now.” He was still watching her with that quizzical expression of a male pondering a puzzle. “Why does it matter?”
She glanced back at him in surprise. “I didn’t know.” She finally shook her head as she felt the pain of not knowing, of not being there if or when he had needed her. He had promised to protect her seven years before, and she knew that if he knew the truth about the Robertses, he would make certain neither Richard nor Annalee darkened her life again. Yet, she hadn’t been able to even contact him, to make certain he was alright.
“Would knowing have mattered?” His expression turned cynical, cool. “Chase was there. I was in Germany for several months recuperating. I wasn’t alone.”
“But I didn’t know,” she said again. “I would have been there.”
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t need pretty words, sweetheart. I survived. That was all that mattered.”
Yes he had, and he had somehow, somewhere, turned cold and hard, so that she wondered if the Cam she had been so fascinated with even existed anymore.
And whether he did or not, she needed to know the damage done. She needed to know what had happened to the man she had idolized, the extent of his pain, and how bad the enemy had scarred his precious body.
It wasn’t the scarring that bothered her so much, it was the pain. The scar across his cheek made him appear more wicked—rakish and dangerous. But the thought of the pain he must have felt traveled through her mind and pushed her, tormented her, drove her to see how much worse it had been.
“I want to see.” She moved from the couch as he watched her, surprised when she pushed his knees apart and knelt between them, her fingers going to the buttons of his shirt.
The icy expression he had come in with was gone, at least. But she didn’t know what to think about the faintly quizzical expression of male confusion in his eyes as he watched her.
“You want to see what?”
“How bad they hurt you,” she whispered. “I need to see, Cam.”
Cameron watched, his head slightly tilted, his arms resting carefully on the sides of the chair, as Jaci’s slender, graceful fingers trembled over the buttons of his shirt and began to slip them free.
With any other woman, he would have pushed her from him and walked away. He couldn’t tolerate pity, or the horrified distaste that often filled their eyes. But this wasn’t any other woman, this was Jaci. And he knew from past experience how she had worried when she was younger, feared for him when she knew he was on a mission.
And he needed to know now, if the scars, the superficial damage done to his body, was going to disgust her. There had been no chance for her to pay attention the night before. He and Chase had overwhelmed her before they even got their shirts off. And she had been exhausted, curled up in sleep by the time he moved from the bed.
“Taking my shirt off could have other consequences, sweetheart,” he warned her, as her fingers moved down the shirt, the material parting as she moved lower.
Her gaze lifted to his as the last button released and her shaking hands moved to part the edges of the shirt. Then her eyes lowered and he watched her grow pale. He saw the tears that filled her unusual eyes, the trembling of her lips as her fingers whispered over the worst of the scarring.